The little book entitled English as she is Taught, which contains a considerable number of genuine answers to examination questions given in American schools, with a Commentary by Mark Twain, is full of amusing matter.  A large proportion of these answers are of a similar character to those just enumerated, blunders which have arisen from a confusion caused by similarity of sound in the various words, thus, ``In Austria the principal occupation is gathering Austrich feathers.’’ The boy who propounded this evidently had much of the stock in trade required for the popular etymologist. ``Ireland is called the Emigrant Isle because it is so beautiful and green.’’ ``Gorilla warfare was where men rode on gorillas.’’ ``The Puritans found an insane asylum in the wilds of America.’’

Some of the answers are so funny that it is almost impossible to guess at the train of thought which elicited them, as, ``Climate lasts all the time, and weather only a few days.’’ ``Sanscrit is not used so much as it used to be, as it went out of use 1500 B.C.’’ The boy who affirmed p 161that ``The imports of a country are the things that are paid for; the exports are the things that are not,’’ did not put the Theory of Exchange in very clear form.

The knowledge of physiology and of medical subjects exhibited by some of the examined is very amusing.  One boy discovered a new organ of the body called a chrone:  ``He had a chronic disease—­ something the matter with the chrone.’’ Another had a strange notion of how to spell craniology, for he wrote ``Chonology is the science of the brane.’’ But best of all is the knowledge of the origin of Bright’s disease, shown by the boy who affirms that ``John Bright is noted for an incurable disease.’’

Much of the blundering of the examined must be traced to the absurd questions of the examiners—­questions which, as Mark Twain says, ``would oversize nearly anybody’s knowledge.’’ And the wish which every examinee has to bring in some subject which he supposes himself to know is perceptible in many answers.  The date 1492 seems to be impressed upon every American p 162child’s memory, and he cannot rest until he has associated it with some fact, so we learn that George Washington was born in 1492, that St. Bartholomew was massacred in that year, that ``the Brittains were the Saxons who entered England in 1492 under Julius Caesar,’’ and, to cap all, that the earth is 1492 miles in circumference.

Many of the best-known examination jokes are associated with Scriptural characters.  One of the best of these, if also one of the best known, is that of the man who, paraphrasing the parable of the Good Samaritan, and quoting his words to the innkeeper, ``When I come again I will repay you,’’ added, ``This he said knowing that he should see his face again no more.’’